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Monday, 28 October 2013

5* for Breathe You In

Katie Lansdale is sifting through the pieces of her shattered life. Eighteen months earlier, a construction accident claimed the life of her beloved husband Matt. He was her whole world; every part of her life centered around being Matt’s wife. Now, she is an emotional and physical wreck. She’s lost weight. Her friends try to help by pushing her to go after life again, but she just can’t let Matt go. Katie’s grief is a tangible, palpable thing and it ripped my heart out from the beginning of this beautiful story of loss and finding love again.

After the accident, Katie chose to donate Matt’s organs. Almost a little mad with grief, she becomes obsessed with the need to know who received Matt’s heart and lungs. She needs to see the recipient healthy and thriving, to know that the heart that loved her so much still beats. This might have been a little odd for some readers, but showing the depth of Katie’s grief made her initial actions acceptable in my eyes. People do odd things when they are grieving. She only wants a peek at the man from afar. It seems harmless, until she bumps into Ruben Strong in the museum where he works and falls in love.

Ruben was a real live wire. A Formula One mechanic, he lived his life in the fast lane of racing. Fast cars and faster women were his thing. And then, his heart starting fading away. After his heart transplant, he’s slowed down, works at a museum and lives a quite careful life. He and Katie click immediately. He doesn’t know that she is the donor’s widow. This makes for a strong conflict between the pair. Ruben is a broken hero, broken but still whole. He needs to feel alive again and Katie does that for him.

Any more and I’d be giving away the story. Breathe You In is both sexy and sweet, tragic and hopeful. The level of emotion Ms. Harlem evokes not only from the characters but the reader as well shows a rare gift. In a few short pages, she managed to make me cry, laugh, and yearn for this couple to connect. Breathe You In has become my favorite title by Ms. Harlem to date. As always, I can’t wait to see what else she has in store for her readers.

If the road to Heaven starts in Hell then I was ready to start climbing my way out and Ruben Strong was the man to accompany me. With his devastating good looks, seductively sexy charm and lust for adrenaline he was sure to make it a sensual and erotic experience as well as one to re-awake the passionate, throw-caution-to-the-wind woman I’d once been.

I’d given Ruben something, though, without him realizing, and that gift had come from the man I’d loved before. But I couldn’t tell Ruben. I had to keep that a tight secret even as our naked bodies wound together, sought out pleasure and hit the dizzy heights of ecstasy as one. Because Ruben had my husband’s heart, literally, and that heart was still in love with me, so it seemed, and now I was in love with Ruben.

Emotions tangled with bliss, and fears were locked away as I surrendered to the touch of Ruben’s hands, the taste of his skin and the sounds of his pleasure. I couldn’t deny that Ruben had brought me back to life the same way I had him and there was no way I was giving up that feeling, not for anyone.

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